Veto Disappoints Backers of Calif. Smoking Ban

[The Straight Story]

Veto Disappoints Backers of Calif. Smoking Ban

Advocates of a bill that would have banned smoking at all California state parks and beaches say they're disappointed in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to veto the measure.

"We're very dismayed to see the governor has not prioritized clean and healthy beaches, especially since our coast lines are a driving force to our California economy," said Angela Howe, an attorney for the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, a San Clemente-based environmental organization.

The foundation had hoped Schwarzenegger would follow a 2008 recommendation by the California Ocean Protection Council to ban smoking at all state beaches to help reduce polluting marine debris.

But the cigar-smoking Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have done that Monday, saying the bill crossed the line of government intrusion.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10546991

Really, we just want to ban smoking in bars that people have a choice to go to (& work at). Oh, and outdoors too. And maybe at your home if a neighbor can smell it. And in your car.

We don't want to control your life...too much. Just enough so that you can't do things we don't ourselves like.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I drive my SUV and pollute more, while I drive my 4 wheeler in the forests, rip about the lakes on my seadoo, etc.

Diversity. It means a lot of things.

[proudohioan]

1. "Meanwhile, excuse me while I drive my SUV....."

LOL, yeah, I have often thought the same thing myself! Not to mention all those empty plastic bottled water containers littering the parks and beaches.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Probably lit up a cigar when he signed the veto.

[Winterblues]

3. I jusr want to piss in your water supply, don't understand why I can't..

Maybe shit on your food as well. Why do you people want to stop me from being free?

[Cleita]

4. I think no smoking laws go too far. We really need to accommodate

smokers instead. For instance, the college I went to was non-smoking, but there was a smoking lounge indoors and a gazebo outdoors on the campus to accommodate smokers. Back then health concerns were not an issue. It was the damage smoke did in coating the walls with yellow slime and stinking up cloth like the drapes and upholstery as well as the cigarette butt litter left behind that the rule was made for. If office buildings had a smoker's lounge where smokers could take their breaks and lunches and in the case of the parks and beaches a picnic area they could use, I think it would be much better than a blanket ban, in which the label "nanny laws" could rightfully be applied. Twice today I have agreed with Arnold, on this, and on the oil rig ban.

[Greyhound]

5. K&R.

:popcorn: